


Grounded

by Chyrstis



Series: You'll be okay, I promise [6]
Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-09-24 22:14:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20365954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chyrstis/pseuds/Chyrstis
Summary: There it was again. She hadn’t put a name to it yet, but now was the time. That sense of being on a tightrope, one step away from disaster, with only luck and the good grace of others to save her.That this was becoming a habit troubled her more than she’d ever admit.---The Deputy makes contact with the Whitetails, and finds out just what it’s like to wake up after a round in the Chair.





	Grounded

**Author's Note:**

> Eli is fun to write, so I think more work's going to have to be done with him later, for sure. Also, Sharky and Hurk? Never change.

This was comfortable. This sensation of floating, and yet resting in place.

Her fingers twitched. She moved them one by one, slowly, clenching and unclenching them. Her arms came next, both of them stiff, and curled around herself, and Hana tried to unwind them as she pried her eyes open.

The white light that met her stare made her squeeze them shut. How long had she been out? How long had she…?

Up until this point, her head hadn’t fed her much. Nothing but a fuzzy haze, and but she saw a dark room, then. And Staci. He had been there. He was still there.

And she was-

Pounding pressure settled in, the sensation pulsing in her skull as she pressed her fingers to her temples to relieve it, but couldn’t.

Red.

Then Jacob.

Red.

She opened her eyes, and forced herself to focus on what was in front of her. The room she was in, and he fabric of the couch underneath her fingertips. What was here, and not left behind in her head. Not this. Not any of this.

A shiver settled over her, one that ran down deep as she sucked in shallow breaths. But she kept them going. Slowed them as she rested there, and tried to swallow back the bile that threatened to come up her throat.

It sent her straight into a coughing fit, one that didn’t want to stop.

“Hey, you’re awake-“

She pushed herself up and back, trying to stay away from the person that approached her. He wasn’t the only one in the room, but he was the closest at the moment.

The one in the back, the one watching from a distance, however, she knew. Or felt like she knew. He was wary much like she was, but started to walk over as well.

The man crouched down by the couch had a friendly smile for her, one that he fought to keep that way even if it didn’t quite reach his eyes. He quickly held up both hands, one of which had a canteen in it. “Here, it’s water. Figured you’d want some."

He handed it to her, the cap already removed for easy access, only for her to almost spit the water up onto him when she couldn’t swallow it. Her throat was raw, and every cough tore through her as she tried to get more water down, anything to soothe it.

“Shit, slow down! It’s not going to help if you choke.”

“Careful, Wheaty. Don’t force it.”

“You tell her that.”

The next sip of water wasn’t coughed out, and soon she was holding the container without having it quake in her hands. Progress. It felt good, and she finally took a good look at the men standing with her.

The one with her was younger than her, though she couldn’t tell by how much, with two long braids and a backwards ballcap on his head. He wasn’t heavily geared up like a few of the other preppers and hunters she’d run into out on the road, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t armed. Still, he hadn’t jumped away, or lost the cautiously friendly tack he’d tried at the start. The other man had called him Wheaty, but it’d take a few more questions to see if that was a first or last name.

The other she decided she did recognize. This was Eli Palmer, and at that realization she did cough into the canteen she was drinking from.

“Easy with that Dep,” he said, his tone even. “Can’t have you drowning now after all that.”

Apparently that recognition went both ways. She wiped at her mouth and couldn’t help but blink at him in confusion. “You…you know me?”

“We’ve seen you up here on the mountain, but before that Dutch was kind enough to give us a rundown as to what you’ve been doing.”

“You’ve seen…” Her voice broke, every word coming out rough and uneven. The water was helping, but not talking would’ve been wiser. Resting also, as she felt her eyelids droop. “Me? Up here?”

“We keep a close eye on anything that happens here. Anything and anyone, so when you showed up, we knew.”

Wheaty gave her a look. “Everybody knew.”

_Everybody?_

She sat back against the couch, and made a sound in the back of her throat. “Fuck. So much for being subtle.”

“Where did they-”

They all looked to the door, and Wheaty traded a nervous look with Eli before moving towards it. He stopped short when a woman crossed into the room, her lips drawn into a tight frown. Dressed in a green cardigan, she didn’t look all too much like a soldier either, but that didn’t mean a thing here. In a fight like this they were all doomed to become them before long.

She took one look at Hana, half-sprawled as she was on the couch, and rounded on Eli. “This is a mistake. You know it is, and you did it anyway.”

“She was the only one left alive in there, you know I couldn’t-“

“You know better. You both do,” she said, pointing at both Eli and Wheaty. “And bringing her here, to us, tells me you’ve lost your fucking mind! It doesn’t matter if they’re alive when you find them. You just don’t-“

“Tammy, look at her, she’s-”

She shot a look at Wheaty. “You leave them to die. That’s what you do.”

_Die?_

Hana sat there, holding onto the couch as Tammy kept on talking. Kept on growing more and more desperate as she spoke to Eli. 

“This is dangerous. She’s been in there who knows how long, has been listening to that song on repeat, and you don’t know what that does. I do. I’ve _seen_ it, you haven’t.”

_No one that goes in there comes back out. And if they do, not right._

“You can’t trust this one.”

Her knuckles had gone white wrapped around the canteen, and her eyes drifted between the three.

Wheaty had given Tammy a wide berth, but Eli had done the exact opposite of what anyone would’ve done after being told he was in the room with a threat. He come closer to her.

Hana thought it would’ve been harder to look at him with the way he was staring at her, examining her closely, but she held it. Wondered what he was looking for in this moment that was keeping him – and had kept him - from doing exactly what Tammy had suggested.

Eventually he turned away, shifting his attention back to the other woman.

She still couldn’t remember it in full, from back there in that room. Not all of it. Not anything past-

Jacob.

_We will do what needs to be done._

“-lucky for you, I didn’t listen. We need her. It’s as simple as that, and I’m not taking any second opinions on it. Understand?”

She felt her head bob, pressing a hand against her mouth as Tammy gave Eli one last look before leaving the room. Wheaty was sent out after, and she shook her head as Eli walked over to her.

“I don’t remember. If I could I’d…would it…?”

“It’s okay.” He took the canteen from her and set it aside. “Don’t focus on that. Not right now.”

She tried to object again, her throat closing up, and stopped when Eli placed a hand on her shoulder.

“We need you,” he told her, his tone firm, but gentle. “That’s all that matters. Now try to rest. We’ll talk later.”

* * *

When she woke up next, her head wasn’t pounding. It didn’t feel perfect, and her mouth and throat still felt drier than the desert, but this was something she could convince herself she could bounce back from. That was an improvement, in and of itself, even as her muscles ached and strained as she shifted.

That, and the fact that this time she wasn’t met with images kicking around in her head. She’d been dreading it, wondering what she’d see this time around, but when she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer, nothing came. Only the off-black dark as she laid there and waited. The relief that brought let her finally disconnect as sleep took her.

It took more effort to get up this time, as Hana pushed herself up and hobbled to her feet, but lucky for her she caught the eye of the person keeping watch before falling flat on her face. Leaning heavily on the couch, they let her take their arm, and didn’t object when she asked about a shower or a change of clothes.

Her jeans had been ripped to accommodate the bandage wrapped around her thigh, and peeling them off had been a challenge even hopped up on the Whitetails’ painkillers. But enough of the material had remained for her to take in the rust-red stains covering both the upper edge of the tear, and the denim covering her calf.

It had been bad. It probably hadn’t helped to have Jacob’s men drag her into that room pre-injured either, but the light treatment they had given her hadn’t led to a worse injury overall. Small blessings, really, but she’d take them. She needed everything working to keep on going here, and didn’t need to play any more fast and loose with herself than she already was. 

All of these thoughts were shoved out the minute the water from the shower hit her. It wasn’t fancy, or fully heated, but the feeling of the water flowing over her soothed her down to her bones.

At least until her body got the memo that yes, it was feeling more beat than not, and promptly gave up the fight. The less said about the state she’d been found in after that the better. Eventually she’d been able to pull some clothes on, had been given the chance to get her leg checked on top of that, and was relieved to hear it didn’t look infected. It was going to be a shit next week or so getting around on it, but she’d do it.

They waved her off when she offered to pay for the treatment with a crumpled set of twenties, but she left it on the gurney with no intention of coming back for it. 

After that, she was escorted back to her mini-room, all the while asking if anyone had heard from Jess, Sharky, or Hurk. The Whitetail member didn’t have any news on that front – and Hana’s own radio wasn’t giving her anything to work with – but said to ask Eli later if she wanted something more concrete.

It was time left idle that was the worst. And so, with nothing left to do but wait, she got right back up and hoped to find some answers herself.

When she found Eli, he was in front of a set of screens, each tuned in to a different area. He was watching them all with interest, taking a few notes on what was present on the one to his left before it switched to another image, another location. Voices came in periodically, most of them stating their name before giving a short update, and Eli would scratch down a few words in response to them as well. This had to be where he spent the majority of his time day after day, unless he was called elsewhere.

She caught the smoke from the F.A.N.G. Center for a moment on one of the screens, and nearly laughed. There was no doubt about it now. He had a front row seat to her antics with a surveillance setup like this, and would likely get an eyeful of any of her future work. Hopefully, the better kind, and not the ‘being a careless asshole’ kind.

Behind him was a large desk. Across it was scattered a variety of things, but the one that caught her eye was the map spread out in the middle. Hers covered the entire county, but this one focused only on the areas up north.

Hana leaned against it, taking some of the weight off of her leg, and let her fingers trace a few of the marked spots on the map. Aside from the major landmarks, she noticed the ones marked as Whitetail territory, and counted them. The number was nowhere near as high as it needed to be, not in comparison to those marked as the cult’s, and thought back to Dutch’s words.

They were right on the edge. All of them. With Jacob about to step on their necks.

She thought of the room, of the people left in there with her. Of what he said as he wound the music box up before playing the first notes.

_We will cull the herd. We will do what needs to be-_

Eli shifted, turning around with a clipboard in his hands, and did a small double-take when he noticed her. “Didn’t expect to see you up this soon.”

“It’s…um.” She pulled her hand away from the map. “I don’t think I did either, honestly.”

He gestured to one of the nearby rooms. “Come on, let’s go sit over here.”

It turned out to be similar to the common room they had set her up in initially, and when she found a chair, Eli held out an arm for her to hold onto if she needed it to sit down. This after, she recalled, he’d already helped her to lie down and rest earlier.

It wasn’t quite kid gloves, she tried to tell herself. Or maybe he was just a polite guy, but she still felt her face warm a fraction, and hoped it didn’t show when he took a seat beside her.

“How’re you feeling?” The look she gave Eli wasn’t great, and he chuckled. “Bad question, I know. But I gotta ask.”

Hana let out a breath, and brushed her hair out of her face. It was a knotted mess by now, one she’d tried to get a handle on after the botched shower attempt, but had to give up the fight before long. “Managing, mostly. But doing a hell of a lot better now than I was when you found me, I bet.”

“You’d been at the Grand View Hotel for two days, at least. When they place you in the Chair, it can last anywhere from a handful of days to a week. However long it takes for them to decide if you’re worth keeping, or throwing away,” Eli said, frowning. “And some die long before they get to make that choice for them. We lost some good men and women in there. Any longer, and there was a chance we could’ve lost you too.”

There it was again. She hadn’t put a name to it yet, but now was the time. That sense of being on a tightrope, one step away from disaster, with only luck and the good grace of others to save her.

That this was becoming a habit troubled her more than she’d ever admit.

“If I’m acting pissy, it’s not because of anything you guys have done, and please, don’t take it the wrong way. I wasn’t smart out there, even with help, and…”

Her eyes fell to her hands, how she’d folded them in her lap to keep from fiddling with her shirt, and noticed how tense her grip had gotten. How a stiff ache had crept up and settled into the muscles of her arms and shoulders. After a few seconds, and after separating and setting her hands down on her thighs, she forced herself to look at Eli again. 

“Anyway, I owe you big time. I don’t even know if I’ll ever get to pay you back for it.”

It was hard to read what he was thinking while watching her, but Eli didn’t question her or press her for more. Yet another thing she had to be grateful for, as she added a notch to her mental tally.

“You pay us back by fighting like you have. You stick with it, put a solid dent in them that they’ll feel, and we’ll always be even.”

Now she just felt silly. Silly and sure her attention was going to stay parked right on her hands. Her hands that just couldn’t stop moving. “That’s straightforward enough. Let me know if you have anything special in mind, though, and I’ll move it right up the list.”

“We’ve got people in need all over, but…if you’re looking for suggestions, I can pass a few your way.”

“Cool.” She bit the edge of her lip and blew out a breath. “Look, I uh, appreciate you giving me your time. You’re a pretty busy guy, and not that I want to take up any more of it, but tell me. Whatever happened in there. Is it…”

“Broken?”

Hana nodded, eyeing him warily. “Yeah. Is that a thing that can be done? Stopped? I still can’t remember much, but I remember Staci – he’s one of the other deputies, one of my friends – and that motherfucker.”

Jacob was no longer a mountain in her mind, standing over her, watching her as the room went black, but his presence lingered.

“Just…talking. Talking, and talking, and then music.”

“It’s a form of classical conditioning,” Eli said, and gave her a rueful look. “You can interrupt it. It’s not easy, but you can also try to reverse it. The goal is to get you to respond to a trigger, a way for them to put you on whatever task they give you. To set you off when no one else expects it. It’s how they want to build their army, and how Jacob’s tried to take us apart.”

“Tammy, right? She was the woman that came in earlier? She seemed pretty set on any of that not working.”

“It’s a risk, but you can recover. She’s worked with a few we’ve saved from it, tried to treat them, and no, it doesn’t always work. But the best way to keep you on our side is to keep you out of that room. There’s no guarantee how you’d do after a second run through it.”

“But what if I do?”

“First, we get you out,” Eli stated, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “We don’t leave our own, and that includes you, Dep. Then we try and break through it a second time, and hope it takes.”

Hope. Not will, but hope.

He couldn’t give her a yes, but she’d take it. She had no choice but to. “Guess we’ll have to see about avoiding that altogether, huh? Not that ol’ Jake’s going to make it easy, but I’ll try.”

“Some days that’s all you can do, but you won’t be alone here.”

“Glad to hear it,” she said, aiming a smile at him. “And maybe I should dodge the whole getting shot in the leg again thing too, because this is…who shoots people in the legs?”

Eli’s expression had been intense before, but it eased, earning her a short laugh. “I think the answer to that’s one you already know.”

“But was definitely not a thing before the impending apocalypse was declared, right?”

“Aside from the times some drunk decided it’d be fine to try and shoot something off of his asshole friend’s head, arrows tended to stay out of people. Mostly.” He was actually kind of smiling at her now, and she liked it.

“Oh, shit,” Hana muttered, snapping her fingers. “I meant to ask earlier. Hope this isn’t too weird of a question, but you haven’t received any strange calls over the last day or so, have you?”

“Calls? Over the radio?”

“Yeah, there might be a few people asking about me. I had one group back at the F.A.N.G. Center I was with, then lost another when Jacob decided that yes, he really did want to bring me in, and wasn’t going to mess around or be nice about it. So, if you’ve heard anything off the wall, or someone asking about a Depu-vee, I’ve got to ask.”

* * *

As it turned out, he did. Or rather the Whitetails did.

The damage done to her radio the first time she’d been taken had been more than enough to keep it from picking up a consistent signal, which cut her off from Sharky and Hurk completely. It’d take a little work to repair it, but it wasn’t anything she could’ve done on the fly out there. That left the two making odd calls for her to anyone that would listen, leaving the brunt of it to the militia.

Jess, on the other hand, had been off of the radar for a while, but responded when the Whitetails reached out. She was still on the Cook’s tail, but had doubled back for Hana up until it became clear they had grabbed her again, and brought her straight to the hotel without stopping.

Hearing from all of them, helped. Being able to actually talk to them helped as well, even if it was in a limited capacity, and she couldn’t quite tell them where she’d been taken to. Jess was reserved, but receptive to her wanting to link up again after having a few days to heal up more, and she barely got a word in around what the guys were trying to tell her, both of them glad to have finally broken through the radio silence.

Getting them both up here was the real challenge, but Eli didn’t seem to have an issue, even after learning just who was following her. Just gave a few Whitetails directions on where to find them, and their word to continue keeping the Wolf’s Den hidden. Giving up that location meant losing everything, and he didn’t mince words when it came down to what that meant.

After that all she could do was wait. Wait, and try not to beg for a pack of cigarettes in the meantime. She’d been itching for another smoke once she’d been able to get food down and keep it down, and was starting to get irritated that it was becoming a habit again. It had been one she’d mostly kicked before coming to Montana, but that was before…this. Which had truly upended everything she had tried to establish.

She hadn’t taken the time to really think it over – and now wasn’t it either – but when that time came, and it would, she’d need a full pack to get through it, easy. That, and hopefully anyone within range willing to put up with any and all of her shitty ways of trying to cope with it. She wouldn’t be picky, not on the verge of cracking like that.

Familiar voices soon filled the hall behind her, and she turned to look. Through the doorway she caught two figures as they passed by, both of them staring at the gear and posters decorating the Whitetails’ bunker, and she held her fingers to her mouth to whistle at them.

Both turned towards her at the same time, mid-conversation, and Hana held up a hand. “Hey, strangers,” she said, and gave them a grin. 

Judging from the look on their faces, there was no mistaking the fact that she looked like shit, but the relief that followed it hit her hard, especially when they both made a beeline for her.

She pushed herself to get up then, in just as eager a hurry as them. The way she’d placed her foot, however, on the way to standing, shot that idea straight down as pain spiked deep in her wound. She hissed right through her teeth, going right back down to the cushions beneath her.

When they reached her, Sharky didn’t go through with what he’d intended to do, keeping his hands hanging in the air between them – he’d totally seen her making a fool of herself getting up, so helping her was a sure bet – and she waved them both off when they tried to fuss over her. The warm smile wavered a bit as well, but he didn’t drop it, even as he shuffled in place and Hurk bumped into him with a set of chairs to use.

“Shit, woman,” Sharky said, giving her a light punch to the shoulder, “you’re tougher than a badger. Disappearing like that only to show up here. Whatever it was that got you, I hope you tore it the hell up. Maybe took its face off too. You know, like badgers do.”

“Uh, thanks?” That was a compliment, she realized, and the longer she thought it over, the more she liked it.

“Just ease up on that vanishing trick of yours, 'cause we spent half of the time out there thinking it was wolves, some hidden shit over at the center that broke loose, or Peggies.”

“He wanted vamps, but we ain’t getting them,” Hurk chimed in, his own chair spun around so he could prop both arms up on the back of it. “Not even fakes.”

“Yo, when you hear a name with that in it, what do you think’s going to be there? I’ve been saying this for years, but the F.A.N.G. Center’s gotta have something with fangs stashed somewhere, which gets your hopes up only to be told, ‘No, we don’t have vampires. No, we don’t have anything supernatural with sharp teeth, stop calling and asking-“

Sharky kept on going for a solid minute after that, and Hana just watched him. Listened as he shifted topic to other creatures like snakes, and why wouldn’t they have had them there – Hurk interrupted to say that they did, they just wouldn’t let him take them out – and she didn’t want him to stop. Hell, she was half-tempted to prod him about whatever was lurking in the woods up here in Montana just to keep him talking, but knew that was a topic better suited to a bar with three beers between them, not a hidden bunker in the mountains.

“But, yeah, some of that’s cool to deal with, but not with people going missing left and right. So, shorty, let’s just…I don’t know. We gotta work out a system or something.”

“Okay,” she replied, giving him a fond look. “Just because you twisted my arm into it.”

“Code names we got covered. We took a vote earlier, but you totally need to pitch in too, so we went with Shurky-“

Hurk gave a sad sigh. “Still not a hundred percent on that one, amigo.”

“Hey, you were the one saying it on the radio earlier!”

“Only 'cause you radioed through and used it first, and we don’t need to start mixing call-signs right after using them! That’s how people get information and wires crossed-“

“It’s a solid combo and easy to remember, but fine,” Sharky conceded, crossing his arms. “We’ll try both later and see if Dep here agrees, but for her it’d be a crime not to use Depu-vee, though, 'cause with her name it rhymes real well, and there’s no confusing anyone with that unless one of the other Deps has a V too. They don’t, right?”

Her confused glance was lost on both of them, hopelessly so. “No, but I don’t know if that’s-“

“It’ll be like one of those fancy spy movies, where we’re all hiding in plain sight, and no one knows we’re trading secrets or talking right under their noses,” Hurk said as he crouched low in his seat, sneaking a glance over his shoulder before turning back to her. “And speaking of secrets, you don’t think they did any of that microchip installing in your brain, or any other bug-like stuff when they got you, right? 'Cause we were wondering about that too, and-“

“Whoa, stop. Stop!”

Hana held her hands out, and when silence fell she took in a long, deep breath. The sound in the room had reached a fever pitch, the conversation leading to a buzzing in her head that made it feel like splitting in two.

And no, she did not want to think about microchips and fingers in her brain. Not right now, and not ever, if preferable.

“Jesus Christ. You’re both going a hundred and ten miles an hour while I’m stuck at fifteen. Just dial it down. Just a little until I’m better able to dish it back, eh?”

Sharky and Hurk clammed up, both trading awkward looks as they sat there.

“Like, I love you guys, but for right now I’m toast. My leg’s messed up, my _head_’s messed up, and we’re not going to be able to head out until I can do better than a rough hobble on this thing. …But you can both call me whatever you want, though, as long as you answer. Deal?”

She held up a hand, her palm facing out towards them, and Sharky and Hurk both shrugged off the tension in the room at the same time.

“Sure thing, chica,” Sharky said, giving her a high five.

Hurk followed suit, smiling broadly. “Yeah, we’ve got you covered, Ms. V.”

She sighed deeply. “Ugh. Anything but that one.”


End file.
